To quote an extract from Fox Talbot’s “The Pencil of Nature” - But when the sensitive paper was placed in the focus of a Camera Obscura and directed to any object, as a building for instance, during a moderate space of time, as an hour or two, the effect produced upon the paper was not strong enough to exhibit such a satisfactory picture of the building as had been hoped for. The outline of the roof and of the chimneys, &c. against the sky was marked enough; but the details of the architecture were feeble, and the parts in shade were left either blank or nearly so. The sensitiveness of the paper to light, considerable as it seemed in some respects, was therefore, as yet, evidently insufficient for the purpose of obtaining pictures with the Camera Obscura; and the course of experiments had to be again renewed in hopes of attaining to some more important result..

Let's have a talk like William Henry Fox Talbot day!

"The effect produced upon the transilluminated computer output device when the disk file had been written by the transparent original image sampling peripheral device was satisfactory enough; but the impression of the paper was not strong enough. Further experiments produced an effect which more closely resembled the paper; when the reflected light image sampling device was chosen for the source of the file. This contradicted earlier convention whereby the introduction of additional generations of image transfer through intermediate materials was sought to be minimized."

even straight forward documentary photography isn't really what's there.
while it can be called evidence or and artifact it isn't, its just an illusion, a reflection, a light-shadow.
its not the kind of illusion that vanishes ( but it really is ) it can't reappear
somewhere else ( but it can ) and it is more based in "reality" than painting and drawing
( not really ) ... color negatives or diapositives aren't true to life, black and white images even less

with the ephemeral quality the materials we are all fooling ourselves with it all just like chalk on the sidewalk ?

what do you do with the illusions you make, and do you even suggest that they might not be "real"

A similar thouht struck me as I was photographing moving objects a few weeks ago.

What does it mean to freeze time and get an image of an object, which really isn't exactly there?

Photography is at its heart unnatural in that we live in a constantly changing now and a photograph is a static image of a "now" that is forever gone. Before the invention of photography there was no way to preserve a moment of time. Some would say "well what about painting?" But a painting is someone's interpretation and only bears a slight connection to reality. If, as some believe, a completely new reality is created for every action taken then a photograph represents the moment just before this new reality is created.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

sometimes i take portraits of people ...
the close friends, even the person who i took the portrait of says " who is that ?!'
it doesn't look like or resemble them at all. it wasn't me, i just pushed the button ... it was the camera.
it isn't hard to create a new reality with a camera, based of the shimmer of our own reality

Our films, lenses, shutters, chemicals, papers, etcetera, interact with the world in certain ways and I can test and see the results of the physics involved here and now.

Our films, lenses, shutters, chemicals, papers, etcetera, don't care about what we believe, or about what we think, about what's written in books about them, or about the magic bullets we might have faith in, or about what we understand, or about what we have yet to learn.

Physics typically gives us "proofs" (observations made of real phenomena) that we endeavor to explain afterwards.

Faith(s) tend to provide explanations that we try to prove later.

Last edited by markbarendt; 06-08-2014 at 03:50 PM. Click to view previous post history.
Reason: clarity

Mark Barendt, Beaverton, OR

"We do not see things the way they are. We see things the way we are." Anaïs Nin

sometimes i take portraits of people ...
the close friends, even the person who i took the portrait of says " who is that ?!'
it doesn't look like or resemble them at all. it wasn't me, i just pushed the button ... it was the camera.
it isn't hard to create a new reality with a camera, based of the shimmer of our own reality

This has been a regular occurrence in my work too, one I even cultivate.

I think part of it is that the way we are, and the way we think we are, and the way the photographer wants to portray us; doesn't normally match. A portrait is many times a struggle of wills.

Several years after my mom died my dad married a nice lady named Mary. Getting a good portrait of Mary was a real struggle, she had the weirdest "say cheese face" that she instantly put on any time a camera was pointed her way, and she was good at spotting any camera. I did finally get a good one of her and my dad during the festivities around my son's wedding. Surprisingly it happened in my studio as the primary subject, surrounded by a full studio set during the rehearsal party. I had my dad spin her as if they were dancing and for once she was caught as most around her saw her.

Last edited by markbarendt; 06-08-2014 at 03:33 PM. Click to view previous post history.

Mark Barendt, Beaverton, OR

"We do not see things the way they are. We see things the way we are." Anaïs Nin